Have Digg given you a hand job?

For a long time now there has been discussion that Digg isn’t as altogether democratic as it would like the world to think. Firstly there was talk about the Digg Mafia and then there was the whole HD DVD fiasco and now suspicion that it’s not Digg users but Digg themselves who are burying stories that don’t fit into their neat little world where Apple and Wii are good and SEO is evil.

Michael Gray has started off an interesting debate at Threadwatch regarding the manual removal of stories from Digg. I’m in no doubt that this is the case. Rather than rely on their algorithm, Digg moderators are removing stories by hand.

Has this happened to you? Have you had a story on Digg one minute and the next it’s gone without a trace and you can’t work out why?